


A Friend Indeed

by thedevilchicken



Category: The Expendables (Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Ageist Language, Aging, Amnesia, Angst with a Happy Ending, Banter, Car Accidents, Everyone Thinks They're Together, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Homophobic Language, Injury, Injury Recovery, Intercrural Sex, Knifeplay, Lack of Communication, M/M, Missions, Mutual Masturbation, Post-Canon, Sharing a Bed, Shower Sex, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-15 06:01:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4595616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Barney's injured, Lee decides to play nurse. But the whole team thinks they're fooling around and Lee's neck-deep in denial; what could possibly go wrong?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Friend Indeed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



> A rare pair treat for linndechir!

It wasn’t a bullet that got him, though he’d expected one day there’d be one with his name on it and then a hole in the ground and a headstone with a name that likely _wasn’t_ his. 

He wasn’t stabbed, though that wouldn’t exactly have been anything new either - he’d been stabbed plenty of times over the years, or at least sliced up a bit here and there and he had the scars to prove it. He wasn’t blown up, it didn’t involve a tank or drowning or a rusty fork; it wasn’t even a shark with a laser strapped to its head. He got hit by a goddamn car while he was riding his motorcycle down to the store for a newspaper or a bottle of whiskey or a box of Band-Aids or whatever the hell it was because after he’d been scraped off of the road and shoveled into the back of an ambulance he had not one single fucking clue in the whole wide world what he’d been on his way out to buy, or when he’d left, or anything for a couple of hours before the crash. He guessed, lying there in the ER, lying there in a bed after that, lying there with an IV in his arm and machines beep-beeping his pulse rate, it didn’t really matter if he was out of milk or if he needed toilet paper or whatever. He’d figure it out later, when he got out and got home, whenever that might be. Of course, for some reason it was all he could think about.

Carrying around fake ID had always served Barney pretty well in the past but he was pretty sure, after the first 24 hours drifting in and out of consciousness under the damn medication, wondering what the fuck it was he hadn’t managed to buy at the store, that the whole ID thing had pretty much backfired this time. The cops came by to ask about the accident and he was just about lucid enough to say he’d been hit by a soccer mom in a silver SUV with two kids and a labrador in the back seat, then she’d left him for dead. Apparently she’d gone on to run a red light because the traffic cams caught her speeding away, one of the officers said, and the security camera outside the bank across the street caught the whole damn thing on tape. He started zoning out right in the middle of a sentence and the cops left, apparently satisfied that they’d gotten the whole story out of him; Barney was pretty sure they had, even if he was still wondering if he’d needed chips or ketchup or a pack of cigarettes though he only ever smoked cigars and those only now and then, so maybe that last part was just his brain being dumb, or just remembering the 70s when pretty much everyone was smoking like a damn chimney. The 70s weren’t exactly fond memories, but at least he’d still been using his own name back then. Not that _Barney Ross_ felt fake, but the one on his licence sure did.

The cops didn’t pick up on the fake ID but he was pretty sure it would’ve taken a higher level of expertise than a couple of uniforms chasing up details on a hit and run to tell it was a phony. He had some pretty good contacts for that kind of thing, after all, from all the jobs he’d pulled back in the early 80s, though half of them had gone to jail or been shot and he was pretty sure some of them had gotten old and died. But yeah, so it had pretty much backfired, because more than a day later _still_ no one had stopped by and he was starting to think maybe he should’ve started carrying around a number in his wallet in case of that kind of shitty emergency when the elevator pinged in that really fucking annoying way it’d been doing for nearly 48 hours solid. When it opened, it was a guy in a wheelchair, two gossiping nurses, a bike messenger peering at a cellphone like he wondered why he’d lost signal in a steel box in a concrete shaft going up six floors, and Lee fucking Christmas with a bag on his shoulder.

“You can’t go in there, sir,” said the nurse at the desk outside the door and Barney wanted to tell her _screw it, sure he can_ except he’d’ve had to raise his voice and with the way his chest felt like it was about to implode with every breath he took he was pretty sure it would’ve done him more harm than good. And hell, the guy was resourceful, he’d figure it out.

“I’m family,” Christmas said. The nurse didn’t look totally convinced by that assertion, probably something to do with the fact that even overlooking the distinct lack of any family resemblance between the two of them he sounded even less American than the Polish guy in the next room who swore all damn night, every night. Christmas leaned closed on the counter, practically conspiratorial. “Look, I’m his partner.” 

She let him in after that, looking ever so slightly taken aback and maybe faintly dubious about the whole thing. Barney would’ve laughed except it kinda hurt to laugh and Christmas didn’t look like he was in the mood for comedy as he took a seat next to the bed, dropping the holdall to the floor at the side of the chair as he did so. 

“ _Partner_?” Barney said, arching a brow as best he could, and under the circumstances he thought he did pretty damn well with that. 

“Got me in the door, didn’t it?” Christmas said. “Besides, I’m the closest thing you’ve had to a girlfriend in years, you cantankerous old bastard. I’m the only one who can stand you.” 

“Y’know, that says as much about you as it does me.”

Christmas shrugged that off and then sat back, looking irritated and not even remotely comfortable though Barney guessed hospital furniture wasn’t renowned for its stringent application of ergonomics. “You look like you got run over by a tank.”

“Have you seen what soccer moms are driving these days?” Barney said. “It pretty much _was_ a tank.”

Christmas didn’t smile. Apparently he really wasn’t in the mood. 

Barney had dislocated a shoulder and broken three ribs - simple costal fractures or whatever the hell they liked to call that shit down in the ER when they wanted to be as confusing as possible around their semi-conscious patients. He’d hit his head, had a concussion that was on its way to fixing itself though his head still hurt like hell, was bandaged up pretty much everywhere conceivable from the road rash because like a fool he’d left his jacket back home and bare forearms stood next to no chance against asphalt. He’d knocked out two teeth near the back though miraculously without breaking his jaw, split his lip, had stitches in four places and there was no way his left knee would be even close to weight-bearing for at least two goddamn weeks. His back hurt and he wasn’t sure if a two-hour gap in his memory really counted as amnesia or not but if it did, he had that too. And, of course, any more time lying in the goddamn hospital and he was going to have a great set of bedsores to go along with all the rest and at that point he figured he might as well just quit and go set up in a retirement community on a beach somewhere in Florida, because at least then he’d get regular sponge baths and maybe mojitos and Lee Christmas wouldn’t be looking at him like he’d willingly dived out of a plane without a parachute and not just gotten side-swiped by a car the size of a small island nation. 

“So how’d you find me?”

“Just ‘cause you’re an idiot doesn’t mean _I_ am,” Christmas said, and the doctor entering the room right at that precise moment gave the two of them an odd, evaluating look. 

“He doesn’t mean it, doc,” Barney said. 

“Sure I do,” Christmas said, maybe slightly petulant about it, and Barney couldn’t tell if he was pissed that he’d gotten himself hurt or pissed that he’d had to come find him. Probably both, knowing him the way he did.

“Visiting hours are over, Mr Yule,” said the doctor, apparently thinking better of commenting on the dysfunctional state of their apparent relationship, and Christmas did, at least, have the good grace to look amused by the name Barney was using. 

“Look, doc, he just got here.” 

“I really did just get here,” Christmas said, though he stood up anyway. “The silly bastard’s been here two days and he didn’t think to call me, I had to ring round the hospitals like an arse just to check he wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere.” Christmas grimaced. “Look, does he _need_ to be here or can I take the damn fool home?”

The doctor narrowed his eyes slightly in Christmas’s direction. “He’ll need assistance for several days,” he said.

“Yeah, he’ll have assistance. And my foot in his arse if he doesn’t take it like a man.” 

“Then I don’t see any reason why he can’t be discharged.”

Barney could see plenty of reasons, of course, most of them to do with the fact he couldn’t walk for shit and lived up at the top of three flights of stairs. Still, he had no intention of staying in the damn hospital any longer than he had to so he had the good sense to keep his mouth shut while Christmas went out to care of the paperwork at the nurse’s station, three of them standing there in scrubs eyeing him then eyeing Barney like they’d both grown a second head or started singing fucking showtunes and Barney guessed he couldn’t blame them; the tattooed-up maybe-ex-military guy in the bed covered in bruises probably didn’t look a whole lot like an aging queen to them and Christmas was maybe twenty years younger than him, looking surly and unimpressed as he shuffled through the papers on the counter. Fuck, maybe pretending like he was his long-lost son might’ve made more sense. Might’ve made him feel like less of an old lech as he thought about what the staff were maybe thinking about the two of them, though the idea of Lee Christmas as a blood relation had its own interesting creep factor pretty firmly attached, all things considered.

When Lee came back in, he pulled a change of clothes from the holdall and pulled a curtain in front of the window and okay, so Lee Christmas helping him out of a hospital gown and into a pair of briefs and a pair of socks and a pair of sweatpants and a shirt that weren’t even his wasn’t the _most_ awkward thing he’d ever done in his life, but it was pretty close. 

“Try not to half kill yourself next time you’re out on a bike,” Christmas said as, between them, they pushed and pulled and got him into a wheelchair for the ride out to the car. “Who’d fly the plane?” 

As they started for the exit, Barney didn’t say Lee could fly the damn plane, Gunner probably could too, probably even Galgo or Doc if they didn’t actually need to land anytime soon. He didn’t say he’d been as careful as it was generally possible to be when out in city traffic and if he’d been wiped off of the face of the earth like so much sad old roadkill it wouldn’t’ve been his own fault at all. He didn’t say he was sorry, though maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t; he didn’t say he regretted making Christmas run around town looking for him and he didn’t say he appreciated that he had, though it was pretty much true on both counts.

He chuckled instead. “Yeah, I’d miss you too,” he said.

***

“I thought you were taking me home, Christmas.”

They’d pulled up outside a building that clearly wasn’t Barney’s and the obvious reason for that was it was where Lee was living, some kind of snooty apartment building with a heavy double wooden front door and bicycles chained up in a row to the metal fence outside. It was nowhere near Barney’s part of town, probably right at the opposite side from it, actually looked pretty nice judging from the well-dressed people in the street walking well-groomed dogs or well-behaved kids in strollers. Barney wasn’t exactly living in a slum but his loft was the top floor of a converted warehouse on a street lined with cheap bars and chop shops and it looked like it, too. 

“Yeah, and I didn’t say _whose_ home,” Christmas pointed out, glancing at him as he killed the engine, and Barney guessed that much was true. “Besides, there were things growing in your fridge that were about to sprout mouths and say _take me to your leader_. Who taught you to clean, Stig of the fucking Dump?”

Barney decided to leave that one alone like he even got the damn reference and Christmas hauled him bodily out of the car with an exaggerated groan at the weight of him that Barney didn’t dignify with a response. Fortunately, there was an elevator just inside the door and he’d had worse, he told himself, _far_ worse, like that time in Afghanistan with Tool and the boys or those bastard Cambodian jungles but damn, he hurt, leaning against the wall outside of Christmas’s apartment while Lee fumbled with his keys like Lee fucking Christmas had ever fumbled with anything in his life before, so maybe that was just some petty form of punishment for making him wonder if he’d died. But they got inside pretty quick after that and they got Barney to the couch and the whole damn thing was weird because it wasn’t like he’d seen Christmas’s place before and it’d been what, five years, six, _seven_ , that he’d known him? 

He yanked off his unlaced boots with a groan and tossed them onto the floor, pulled his fucked up knee up onto the couch and let Christmas shove a cushion underneath it before he laid back. 

“Nice place,” Barney said, with a vague gesture around the room because it really was a nice place, pretty spacious, neat and tidy with a big-screen TV and pretty much nothing else there in the lounge except the essential furniture, like it’d been cleaned for a viewing after the last renter had moved on, like no one lived there at all. But there were marks on the top of the coffee table where Lee had probably scraped it while sharpening knives and a stain on the exposed hardwood floor like he’d not quite managed to scrub out a spilled bottle of red wine before it settled in for the long haul, and he’d probably been there for months, if not years. At least Barney thought it was probably wine. “I must be paying you too much.”

“You don’t pay me enough for _this_ shit,” Christmas said, retrieving Barney’s beat-up boots from the floor and waving them at him like a drama queen, but he’d got the start of a smile on his face. Neither of them said anything about the fact his damn boots were the only thing anyone had managed to salvage from the accident - he’d seen what was left of his damn expensive watch, wallet torn to pieces though it’d probably literally saved his ass from the road, even his jewellery had been wrecked along with the bike and tossed out with his ruined clothes. One of the cops had shown him a photo of the bike on his phone in a fit of true professionalism and Jesus, it was a mess. And, of course, insurance for a bike registered under a fake name was going to be a son of a bitch to figure out when it came to that.

“You could’ve just dropped me off at my place and I’d’ve called in a nurse,” he said.”Pretty, young, nubile…”

Christmas snorted, dumping Barney’s boots by the door with his own. “So what am I, Nurse Ratchett?” 

“Well, my ideal caregiver would have more hair.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, I’ve got plenty of hair,” Christmas said, pulling up his shirt and giving his chest hair a dramatic rub, and Barney found out laughing really did hurt. But it was sure as hell better than a hospital bed with a plinging fucking elevator noise and a cursing Pole keeping him awake all night. 

Doc and Gunner dropped by a couple of hours later and drank all of Lee’s beer in front of the TV while they told Barney in pretty exhaustive detail just how shitty he looked, Doc throwing in the occasional medical term though they were all pretty sure he was just making shit up for good measure, the three of them coming up with stories about what he might’ve done in those missing two hours like maybe he’d robbed a bank or spent his life savings on a hot Italian sports car then forgotten all about it. It continued pretty persistently till Christmas chased them out around nine, before they could start on the hard liquor and Barney didn’t doubt they would have, the cheerful-insulting mood they were in. Then Christmas hauled Barney’s exhausted ass into the bedroom, stripped him down to his underwear and checked all his dressings pretty thoroughly though not exactly gently before he tucked him into bed like he’d turn into his grandma, into _his_ bed, sucking his teeth with a shake of his head. Barney guessed he looked every inch as bad as the guys had said but he hadn’t bothered looking in a mirror just yet; he had a fair amount of experience with getting beat up, though he had to admit he had a hell of a lot less experience with getting nursed through it. 

“You don’t have to do this,” Barney told him, lying there, pretty close to helpless. 

Christmas gave him a sardonic little smile as he grabbed a pillow and a blanket like he was planning a night on the couch; he probably was, though they’d not discussed it. Fortunately it had turned out the couch was pretty comfortable, even if Barney still felt a twinge of guilt.

“Of course I don’t have to,” Lee said. “Doesn’t mean I won’t.” 

And that was that. Barney guessed he couldn’t argue. 

***

Being injured fucking sucked. Barney already knew that from years upon years of rueful past experience, but this time it _really_ sucked. 

He was trapped in Lee’s apartment, couldn’t even hop on one foot to get around because his ribs hurt so damn much when he did, but he worst part of it was he couldn’t even get to the damn bathroom on his own - he’d got a set of crutches Doc had brought over from who the hell knew where but his shoulder was still all fucked up and couldn’t bear his weight any more than his knee could. And then when he did finally get to the bathroom, using Christmas like a hoist or a walking aid or a combination of the two, he couldn’t even stand up long enough to piss on his own. And so there was Christmas, holding him up and bitching about how he’d obviously been putting on weight while he tried to aim for the bowl with a pair of scraped up, bandaged up hands. 

“If you pee on the floor I’m not cleaning it up,” Christmas said, while Barney tucked himself back into sweatpants he wasn’t even sure were his. He wasn’t even sure he owned sweatpants, not that he doubted Lee’s ability to break into his apartment and find out.

“Just wait till I need to take a shower,” Barney said ominously. Christmas groaned. It was a pretty appalling prospect.

They ate bowls of shitty pasta shells that’d been boiled almost to the point of disintegration, sitting together watching soccer on the huge television in the lounge like Barney gave a damn who West Ham and Fulham were; they sounded more like a pair of British butcher shops than sports teams but apparently Christmas enjoyed it, talking over it in a hyper-enthusiastic tone like Barney even had a clue what an offside rule was. Christmas ran on a treadmill under the window for a whole damn hour after that till he was dripping in sweat and Barney just needled him about how he was pretty sure he’d been faster at his age and could definitely have gone longer. Christmas said something about how when Barney was his age he’d have been even younger himself and so he’d _still_ have been quicker, and then he hopped off of the treadmill and toweled down. 

“You need to take better care of yourself,” Christmas said, suddenly serious for a second, if just for a second. “Neither of us is getting any younger.”

Barney guessed that was true; right then he felt pretty damn old and it wasn’t just because he’d been mowed down by an SUV and come out of it somehow, _somehow_ with basically just cracked ribs, an aching shoulder, a knee that felt like he’d taken a bat to it and a mysteriously fractured toe. Christmas left the room, pulling off his shirt along the way, and Barney knew he hadn’t looked like Christmas did right then anytime in the past fifteen years if he ever had at all. But hell, he hadn’t employed the guy for his charm and bonhomie. He hadn’t even hired him because he was easy on the eye though that was at least a slightly more sensible thought than the Lee Christmas School of Charm. Fucking resounding failure that would be.

The guys came round again that night, brought Galgo and Luna and Smilee and all their own beer because Christmas hadn’t had the time to leave the apartment to buy any and had gotten the spirits all tucked away neatly out of sight since it was apparently the good stuff. They watched a shitty movie, all making fun of the CGI explosions, pointing out how it’d looked that time they busted up the arms op in Mexico or the drug cartel in Guatemala and Barney just sat there on the couch, the calf of his fucked up leg stretched over Christmas’s thighs like that was normal somehow, like the heat pack Christmas was holding to his knee was nothing out of the ordinary and maybe that was true because for a while it felt easy, not weird at all. But then the son of a bitch started rubbing his thumb against Barney’s thigh right above his knee and that was _not_ normal, nowhere close, even if it looked like he didn’t even realise he was doing it while he cursed along at the screen, involved in some kind of dumbass half-joking argument with Gunner who’d wound up sitting on a crappy throw cushion on the floor due to a lack of seating and was still pretty much taller than Galgo. Barney, helpless, mutely reactive, just got harder and harder with each passing minute Lee was rubbing at his leg, the cushion on his lap saving what little was left of his dignity. Considering he was sleeping in the guy’s bed and needed his help to get to the john, his dignity had already taken a pretty brutal beating.

He was still half-hard when the guys left, when Christmas hoisted him into the bedroom and got him out of his shirt, out of his pants, helped him into bed with an amused half-smile and then started to check over his dressings, replacing them here and there. 

“If I’d known you were so hot for shitty action flicks I’d’ve suggested a rom com,” Christmas said. 

Barney just gave him a tired, half-hearted glare; there was pretty much no good way to say it had nothing to do with the movie, no good way to say he’d almost let him go after the first job they’d pulled together because goddamnit if Lee Christmas wasn’t just his type exactly, mouthy and muscular and deadly when the mood struck. Sure, so it wasn’t like he’d been pining away like a particularly sad old loser since they’d met and once they’d gotten to be friends it hadn’t been like he’d thought about it more than once a month, once a week, maybe less, maybe a whole lot more, depending on how hard he was trying to fool himself at that particular moment. But he could do platonic and even like it just as long as Lee didn’t have his hands on him like casual intimacy was somehow par for the damn course. He’d gotten used to working with him, having someone to count on and watch his back. He didn’t need anything else. He really didn’t.

The problem was it didn’t help when he woke up with a hard-on he could hammer in nails with in the middle of the night and had no way to get himself off without Christmas knowing _exactly_ what he’d been doing, right there in his bed, probably _because_ he was in his bed. It helped even less that he knew exactly what he’d been dreaming about to wind up that way, and he was pretty damn sure it’d wipe the smile right off Christmas’s face if he told him. Lee Christmas just didn’t swing that way.

He guessed the next couple of weeks would be pretty much kill or cure, make or break. It was about time he got over it, one way or another.

***

The third day, he realised he’d been right about the shower problem. He kinda wished he hadn’t joked about it. He kinda wished he’d managed to get home and get a nurse, though he guessed he wasn’t desperate enough to wish he’d still been in the hospital. Except maybe he was because rather he lose his mind to the melody of an elevator bell than totally fuck things up with pretty much the best friend he had left in the world, pretty much the best friend he’d _ever_ had. 

“You smell like a secondary school changing room after PE,” Lee told him, once they’d decided on a plan of action and he’d gotten in closer. 

“I’m guessing that’s bad,” Barney said. “I’d’ve thought you’d speak better English, y’know, coming from England. What do they teach you guys over there?”

“The problem is you yanks don’t know what English is,” Lee said, leaning down to help him up, an arm around his waist. “It’s _chips_ , not fries. _Crisps_ , not chips. And what the fuck is _aluminum_? Do you need to buy a vowel?” With some awkward manoeuvring, they managed to get Barney up off of the couch and onto his not entirely fucked leg, one of Barney’s arms around Lee’s shoulders, one of Lee’s arms around Barney’s waist; Lee scowled half-playfully. “Jesus, you smell like Germolene and three-day-old football socks. C’mon, I’m not giving you a sponge bath.”

Once they got into the bathroom it turned out there was nothing but safety glass or smooth tiled walls to lean against, not enough room in the shower stall for a chair even if Lee had actually owned a plastic one and fuck, he _really_ needed to get clean, cleaner than he could get with a cloth and a faucet and the judicious application of soap. So Christmas, being the determined goddamn nursemaid he was turning out to be, set the shower running, stripped Barney naked then stripped himself and got right in behind him, practically daring him to fall the fuck down on his watch. 

“I think this might be the gayest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Christmas said, letting Barney lean against him under the spray to get his weight off of his bad knee, hands at Barney’s hips helping keep him stable and upright. “Except that one time in Beirut. I looked fucking fantastic in a skirt.”

“I’ve gotta say I didn’t think you’d got the legs for it,” Barney said, trying hard to wash his hair with shampoo that wasn’t his but couldn’t’ve been Lee’s for obvious reasons, didn’t even smell remotely like his but had probably been bought for him, while standing on one leg with a broken little toe and leaning back naked against Lee fucking Christmas. It wasn’t the way he’d imagined his life going, that was for sure. Of course, what he guessed he’d imagined was an uneventful ride to the store and back for whatever the hell it was he’d wanted, if he’d even wanted anything in the first place. Fortunately, the sting of water and shampoo over his cuts and scrapes took his mind off it. 

“These beauties?” Christmas pulled up one leg, stretching it out past Barney’s busted knee in all its hairy-ass glory; the two of them wobbled dangerously, nowhere near as stable with Christmas on one leg just like Barney was, so he put his foot back down. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Legs only a mother could love, I’m telling you.” Christmas chuckled, and Barney felt it through his back just as much as he heard it, Christmas’s chest pressed against him the way it was. “And y’know, I’m pretty sure the Scottish like to call them _kilts_ , not skirts.” 

“Minor technicality.” 

Of course, the only real minor technicality was the fact that Barney hadn’t gotten any in months and even then it’d been disappointing, a brief fumble with some cocky son of a bitch in a suit he’d met in a bar after a fight, a thirty-something lawyer type who’d maybe thought it’d be exciting and dangerous to screw the old guy with all the tattoos who’d kicked three guys’ asses in quick succession over some dumb insult or another that they wouldn’t let go. Problem was, fights didn’t get Barney’s blood up like they’d used to and the guy had been all fucking thumbs and in the end he’d tossed him out of his truck and told him to find someone his own age to waste his time with. It was pretty tough to get in the requisite amount of trying not to imagine it was Lee in the truck in a compromising position when the guy couldn’t’ve reminded him less of him in the first place, after all.

So it was dumb because he knew it couldn’t end well, could blow up in his face pretty spectacularly, but apparently his damn traitorous body didn’t care who the guy in the shower with him was or what the consequences might be, only that there _was_ a guy in the shower with him, right up close, skin on skin. And, of course, there was no fucking chance that Lee wasn’t going to notice his obvious physical reaction there in that damn confined space, as much as Barney hoped like hell he wouldn’t. 

“Well, now it’s _definitely_ the gayest thing I’ve ever done,” Christmas said, and Barney guessed he could only be thankful he’d kept him upright once he’d noticed and not just exited the scene and let him fall straight down on his foolish ass. 

“Yeah, it’s nothing personal.”

Christmas’s arms shifted forward a fraction, palms pressed to the front of Barney’s hipbones; Barney could feel Lee’s breathing pick up, could hear the not-quite-catch in his voice. “I’ve gotta say it _feels_ pretty personal,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it.” Barney chuckled, forced himself into it though his ribs complained. “It’s pretty fucking miraculous a guy my age can get it up at all.” Christmas made a low sort of amused sound by Barney’s ear; fuck, Lee was close to him, practically the whole damn length of his body pressed to Barney’s back like that was sensible in any friendship though Barney guessed the two of them were nothing if not unusual. “Pretty sure we’re done, I’m as clean as I’m gonna get.”

It was odd. It was really fucking odd because Christmas didn’t move right away, just stood there under the shower with his hands resting over Barney’s hipbones, tracing the curves of them with his thumbs with his forehead resting down against his shoulder. Then, finally, he took a deep breath and reached past him to turn off the shower and they manoeuvred back out of it, dancing around each other, tossed a towel over the closed lid of the toilet seat and Barney dried himself off as much as he could once he’d sat himself down on it while he tried like hell not to watch Christmas drying himself, too. It might’ve been the gayest thing Christmas had ever done but fuck, it wasn’t even close to the gayest thing Barney had done in his life, not even when they looked at each other, Barney still hard, Christmas holding a towel there over his dick and failing to cover much else with it at all. If he hadn’t’ve felt like the biggest pervert on earth he might’ve told him he could think of gayer things they could do, so maybe it was for the best he _did_ feel like a creepy perv already. But it still wasn’t close to Barney’s most homoerotic moment when Lee dropped the towel and walked away naked like he was trying to prove none of it bothered him. It bothered him; he wouldn’t’ve left if it hadn’t. And Barney stoically refrained from asking himself why the fuck Christmas had agreed to any of this in the first place.

“Deal with that thing before your balls turn blue,” Christmas called from the next room, once he’d vacated the bathroom entirely. “Give me a shout when you’re done.”

And so there was nothing else for it. Barney got himself off in a series of awkward jerks sitting on the can in his best friend’s bathroom, and even though he tried to think of something else, some _one_ else, _anyone_ else, it was still Lee fucking Christmas in his head when he came. 

***

The guys came round again that night. Barney was pretty sure they were seeing the visits as their civic duty as well as an opportunity to get blitzed without having to lift a finger to clear up after themselves, but it wasn’t bad to see them again even if it was pretty unusual to spend so much time with them between jobs when they usually went their separate ways and did their own thing, at least for a while. They watched a hockey game this time, Gunner bitching about how hockey was better in Sweden though no one else really gave a damn what he thought about it, which was pretty much business as usual. 

Pizza boxes strewn all over the lounge, emptied beer bottles littering every flat surface, the guys shuffled out around ten and Christmas looked at him from across the room where he’d taken up residence in an armchair instead of under Barney’s legs on the couch. He guessed that made sense, considering the turn things had taken through their misadventures in personal hygiene. 

“You know I’m not gay, right?” Christmas said, still cradling a half-empty beer in his hands. 

Barney smiled what he guessed was a kind of self-deprecating smile, or at least that was what he was going for. “Yeah, I know you’re not gay,” he said, wishing the meds he was still taking on and off worked at all well with alcohol because he would’ve liked a beer of his own, or four, or ten. Might’ve made the conversation easier, except that the conversation ended right there and Christmas put down his beer on the worn coffee table, then hauled him up and through into the bedroom where he left him to try divesting himself of clothing without assistance. Seemed pretty mean, Barney thought, but he also guessed he couldn’t blame him for it. Just meant he slept in sweats that weren’t his own like he hadn’t been wearing someone else’s clothes for four damn days by then, smelling like Lee’s soap and Lee’s deodorant and Lee’s washing powder, sore because apparently his shoulder wasn’t doing as well as he’d thought and his ribs were going to hurt for weeks. He didn’t sleep well, but he hadn’t imagined he would.

“You pulled your stitches,” Christmas said in the morning. 

Barney hadn’t noticed that there was blood seeping through the bandage into the shoulder of the shirt that wasn’t his but apparently there was, so Christmas sat him down in the bathroom by the basin before breakfast, faucet running, and he redressed the wound, which was a pretty damn odd situation when he was pretty clearly trying to avoid looking at him at all. Barney refrained from pointing out the reason he’d pulled his damn stitches was he’d been left to try to get a shirt off of himself without assistance they both knew he still needed but he could see Lee was thinking that anyway. It was always pretty obvious when Christmas was kicking himself on the inside, just from the look on his face. 

He watched him run on the damn treadmill while the TV was tuned to a station playing endless news like that was a kind of penance. He watched him exit the bathroom after a brief shower that had done literally nothing to get Barney’s mind off the idiocy of the situation with a towel slung low around his waist and he tried not to think about all the things his damn fool brain wanted him to think about, like how easy it would’ve been to yank the towel away as Lee walked by, how he’d’ve liked to’ve asked him to drop it himself, maybe to’ve _told_ him to do it, and for some reason his brain told him maybe he would’ve. He could imagine how easy it would’ve been the day before to bring one of Lee’s hands down over his belly in the shower, close his fingers around his dick and, well, damn, if he’d’ve done it the guy would’ve laid him out cold but that didn’t stop his head from going there and lingering awhile. He was old enough to know better. He was _more than_ old enough to know better, but somehow that fact didn’t seem to help. 

He was old enough to know better than to try to leave, too, but he went ahead and did it anyway. He strapped up his knee with tape and bandages while Christmas was out picking up groceries and probably beer - he was still pretty much fucked if he could remember what he’d needed from the store that day but his brain kept going there, too - then pulled on his boots and actually made it halfway down the hallway to the elevator before he knew he’d screwed up in spectacular style. Turned out he wasn’t going anywhere, at least not just yet. Turned out he wasn’t even getting back to the apartment door, not that he could’ve let himself back in once it’d locked itself behind him.

“You’re an arse,” Christmas said when he got back from the store and found him sitting there on the floor in the corridor. “And here I thought Gunner was the token cretin.” He left him there to drop the groceries and what looked like a replacement for Barney’s wrecked cellphone inside the door then came back and hauled his ass up off of the floor. “Use your goddamn words in future, Barney. If you’ve got a problem, there’s this magic new technique called _talking_. I hear all the cool kids are doing it.”

Barney chuckled darkly at that as Christmas set his idiot ass back down on the couch. It really wasn’t a problem he could talk about. And besides, he didn’t feel much like pointing out Lee wasn’t doing a whole lot of talking about his own problems, either.

***

The weirdness did _not_ end. Pretty specifically because Barney couldn’t stand himself without a shower for more than a couple of days and wiping himself down with a soapy washcloth on a chair in front of the basin in the bathroom was wearing pretty damn thin since there were still parts he couldn’t reach thanks to the ache in his shoulder and the soreness of his ribs. Problem was he could still barely stand and so Christmas sighed dramatically and turned on the shower for a second time. 

“I swear to God, if you get another hard-on I’m gonna leave you in here till you’re a fucking prune,” Christmas said, pulling off his shirt with a faint little smile. “Not that you’re not halfway there already. I mean Christ, didn’t anyone ever introduce you to sunblock in your younger years?”

“Like they introduced you to manners? You’re meant to respect your elders, Christmas.”

“Well, I guess you’re right about the _elder_ part…”

They got into the shower, shifting around the door naked as the day they were born though Christmas would probably have had something half-snide to say about just how far apart those days actually were, and Barney went to work on his damn greasy hair while Christmas shored him up from behind. When he got to parts he couldn’t reach because of his crapped-out shoulder or his aching ribs, Christmas bitched and took the washcloth from him, scrubbed down his back, leaned down awkwardly to get to his calves and when he stood back up he took an unsteady breath against the back of Barney’s neck that he could feel even past the water streaming over it. 

“Fuck,” Lee said.

Sometime in the three seconds that followed, Barney guessed he understood the reaction; after all, he figured out pretty quickly in those three seconds that he’d got the length of Lee’s cock pressed up against the crack of his ass and it wasn’t exactly a flaccid, friendly feeling. 

Christmas rested his forehead down at the back of Barney’s neck. “Fuck,” he said again. 

“That’d be one solution,” Barney said, before he could stop his damn smart mouth, and Lee made a sound somewhere about halfway between a guffaw and something a whole lot less than amused, slightly desperate, slightly hopeless. Barney could understand that; he still remembered the first time he’d gotten hard with a guy before he’d come to terms with the whole thing. Not that that was what this was. 

“Fuck,” Lee said, _again_.

“Look, just jerk off and get it over with.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

“Well yeah, I just said it.” 

Lee made that weird sound again as he leant his head back, each breath he took making his chest rise and fall against Barney’s back, making his cock shift against Barney’s ass and just when he thought they were going to wind up with Lee freaking out and getting the hell out of Dodge at full tilt, Lee’s hand went down between the two of them, went down around his hard-on and started to stroke. Barney could feel the back of Lee’s hand moving against his skin and fuck, the idea of what he was doing back there, stroking himself with his free arm moving to wrap around Barney’s waist to steady him, was _unbelievable_. He wanted to turn around and watch him do it but even if he hadn’t thought that’d send Lee running for the hills he wasn’t sure he could even turn around under his own power without dragging them both down in a heap. So he stood there, eyes closed, a pretty clear picture in his head, and it wasn’t long before he felt a tell-tale splash of heat against the small of his back. Lee’s arm tightened around his waist with it, his other hand still caught between them, still there with the back of it pressed to Barney’s backside like that didn’t bother either of them. 

“Fuck,” Lee said, half-breathless, words muffled against Barney’s shoulder. 

“Yeah,” Barney agreed, suddenly the dazzling epitome of wit. 

They didn’t talk about it after and Barney guessed that was for the best. Once they’d dried off, Lee helped him into his clothes with his lips pressed into a hard line that usually meant he didn’t feel like talking and nothing was going to persuade or cajole or bribe him otherwise, then disappeared into the kitchen to rustle up something to eat. The sandwiches weren’t exciting and they ate at the kitchen table in absolute silence, until they weren’t silent and they _were_ talking about it, at least in a way, a stunted way that Barney guessed made sense for their stunted idiot relationship. 

“You still know I’m not gay, right?” Lee said. 

Barney chuckled over his shitty chicken sandwich. “Yeah,” he said. “Trust me, I know you’re not gay.” 

Christmas went out that night, left Barney alone in the apartment if you could call sitting there with Gunner and Galgo _alone_ and he pretty much couldn’t considering the way the two of them just talked and talked and fucking _talked_ , and that only got worse when they drank. He wound up playing shitty games on his new phone till his thumbs felt damn near arthritic and when Christmas came back in around eleven and the other guys left, when he helped him up from the couch and into the bedroom, he smelled like cheap beer and cheaper perfume. It wasn’t quite lipstick on his collar but Barney got the picture. He guessed he understood. 

“You have fun?” he asked, without really meaning to, once he was lying there in bed. 

“No, not really,” Christmas said, which was _not_ the answer he’d expected. “Look, I’ve got a problem.” He sat down heavily on the end of the bed, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped. “ _We’ve_ got a problem.” 

Barney sighed, trying to push himself up onto his forearms and failing entirely. “So take me back to my place and we’ll forget this bullshit ever happened.”

“You think that’s even possible right now?” Christmas glanced at him then apparently thought better of it and looked away again, down at his hands. “I was all set to screw a girl tonight, pretty, brunette, legs right up to her neck. And then we got to her place and when we made it into bed I couldn’t get it up. You can see how that’s a problem.”

Barney shrugged. “Happens to the best of us now and then, y’know,” he said. “When you get to my age…”

Christmas looked at him and rolled his eyes dramatically. “Oh, boo fucking hoo, your age. I’m saying I couldn’t get it up with her ‘cause I was thinking about _your_ ugly arse.”

“Most people would say not getting it up thinking about another guy’s ass is a _good_ thing,” Barney said. “At least for the average straight guy.”

“Smartarse. That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

They paused, lapsing back into silence though that wasn’t exactly their natural state, at least not when the two of them were around each other. Christmas ran one hand over the stubble over his head, rubbed at the stubble at his jaw, and Barney prodded at his shoulder where the stitches were, right in the middle of a tattoo, like maybe the ache of it would take his mind off the stupid situation they’d gotten themselves into but in the end he had to admit it didn’t help at all, just made him scowl at himself. Maybe there was a discussion they needed to have, like they ever did well at serious discussion, like they ever did it without descending into half-assed insults that trailed into beer or blowing shit up.

Then Christmas stood again, started pulling at his clothes till he was left there in his underwear and undershirt and socks and Barney was left watching him, wondering what the fuck was going on as Christmas flicked off the lights and slipped into the empty side of the bed. 

“I’m sick of sleeping on the fucking couch,” he said by way of explanation. 

And so that was that, discussion over before it began: they went to sleep in the same bed. It was a hell of a lot better than actually having the conversation, Barney had to admit.

***

Barney woke in the morning around 6am and Lee was still there, stretched out face down with his face buried in a pillow. 

“I can hear you looking at me,” he said, muffled by the pillow but more or less audible in spite of it. “It’s too early. Quiet the fuck down.”

Deciding it was probably best not to try to follow that particular path of weirdass Christmas logic, Barney dutifully went back to sleep. He was more than tired enough for it.

When he woke the second time it was later, lighter, maybe 7.30, and Lee was _still_ there. 

“Too early?” Barney said, contemplating getting out of bed anyway and forcing Christmas with him, but the throb in his knee made him think better of it. 

“Too early,” Lee confirmed, still talking into the pillow. “I didn’t leave the forces to keep the fuck on getting up at the crack of bloody dawn. Go back to sleep.”

Barney popped a couple of pain pills that helped him oblige, except he woke again around 8.15 and Lee was _still there_ , just this time he’d turned onto his side, head up on one hand, watching him as he yawned. 

“You snore,” Lee said. “Like a lawnmower. I don’t know how you don’t wake yourself up, and half the neighbours.”

“You complain too much,” Barney replied. “You’ll give yourself an ulcer.”

Lee made an amused sound and reached over to flick him right between the eyes. 

“Infant,” Barney said.

“Old man.” 

“That’s real cute.”

“Thanks, I thought so.”

And just like that they were back to normal like nothing had ever happened, except it had and Barney got the distinct impression they both knew it, they just weren’t talking about it by some kind of idiotic tacit agreement. He guessed that was for the best; it wasn’t exactly a friendship he was looking to lose. 

That night, Lee helped him strap up his knee and pad his shoulder and they got him up on crutches long enough to get out of the apartment and into a bar for a thoroughly unhealthy dinner of chicken wings and soda instead of beer, since he was still occasionally taking the pain meds, all on Lee’s dime since Barney still didn’t have a wallet after his old one had been pretty effectively destroyed. The others came in around eight, _all_ of the others like they had nothing better to do with their downtime, pulling tables together rowdily till some of the bar’s other patrons started to glare like it was ever the sort of place you’d go for quiet time. There was some bad karaoke and no one was sure what to make of Gunner singing Britney Spears and Barney felt pretty good, even if his knee was throbbing like a son of a bitch by the time they called it a night. 

The two of them headed back to Christmas’s place. They undressed and went to bed and Barney tried not to look as surprised as he felt when Lee got in next to him for the second night in a row, stretching out under the blanket with the lights off.

He guessed the bed was better than the couch but even Barney couldn’t convince himself that was the only reason for it. 

***

They took a shower in the morning and Lee didn’t freak the fuck out when the inevitable happened. He rubbed the entire length of himself along the crack of Barney’s ass, rubbed himself between his cheeks like that was perfectly normal behaviour for the two of them and once he’d come with a curse and a shudder he slipped his arm around Barney’s waist, slipped his hand over his belly, down lower till his fingertips brushed the base of his cock. He paused there a moment before he wrapped his fingers around him loosely and apparently he wasn’t planning on leaving him there to prune after all in spite of previous threats and promises.

“Any advice?” Lee said, his voice strained.

“Just pretend like you’re doing yourself,” Barney replied. “I’m sure you’ve got plenty of experience.” And though Christmas gave a half-amused snort at that, it seemed to work out pretty well because there was no damn teasing, just Lee’s fist around his dick till he came so hard he was pretty sure he pulled something. He was surprised he had anything left unpulled to pull.

They did it again the next day and the day after that, getting up in the morning and heading into the shower, Lee pressed up behind him all breathless and handsy and smart-mouthed. They did it the day after that though Barney was pretty sure his knee was getting strong enough that he didn’t need the help; they did it the day after that and the day after _that_ , till he was pretty damn positive his knee was strong enough for him to shower alone because he was doing everything else up to and including walking down to the store on the corner to pick up groceries with Lee’s cash and he still couldn’t remember what the fuck it was he’d needed that day he’d been hit and he knew, _knew_ he didn’t need to be living out of Lee’s apartment anymore. But there he still was, eating his food, wearing his clothes, sleeping in his bed. Jesus, they even smelled the same. 

He started walking on the treadmill, started jogging after that, kept going till he’d been there three and a half weeks and he could run ten minutes without a twinge in his knee or his ribs and Lee started joking about how he’d give himself a heart attack before his knee gave out. They went out to jog in the park down the street in the morning after that, once they were pretty sure Barney wasn’t going to fall straight down in a grumbling heap, but they were still hopping into the damn shower together afterwards, enough space in there so they could wash themselves down separately without elbows in sides or knees in groins or whatever before Lee would press up against him and they’d get off just the way they had before, more than once, more than a handful of times, Lee’s mouth up against Barney’s neck as he stroked him from behind. They didn’t talk about it and Barney didn’t press - he was pretty damn surprised Lee was comfortable with even that much. Hell, he was surprised he was himself, as much as he’d wanted it. The idea of pissing their entire friendship up the wall damn near terrified him. 

It was enough. Hell, it was more than Barney had had in years, more than he’d let himself imagine even back in the start. It was enough even when they started shifting back into all the shit they’d done before he’d been hit, after Lee had swiped all of Barney’s replacement credit cards and associated crap out of his apartment and left him to slot them all into a new wallet he slid over the kitchen table after breakfast one morning. He found there was a scrap of paper in there already, like maybe it’d been torn off of the top of a matchbook from a shitty bar, _In case of emergency, call Lee Christmas_ written on it with a number in Lee’s surprisingly legible handwriting. Barney raised his brows; Lee shrugged; they didn’t talk about it but Barney tucked the paper back into the wallet and he left it there. There was something reassuring about it that he didn’t think about too hard.

Barney starting work on a new bike and the sea of insurance documents could go to hell while Lee went to the range with Gunner and that was a hell of an unlikely occurrence right there until he figured out they were having some kind of dumb competition. He started taking the plane out just to log some hours while Lee was throwing knives at a dartboard with Doc and he guessed that was a competition, too. He took jobs over the phone, small ones, nothing crazy, nothing they couldn’t handle, some air recon by the Mexican border for three days that he did with Gunner while Lee bitched and moaned over the phone to him half the time, an energetic four-man op in Brazil so he sent Lee with Smilee and Luna and Thorn while he sat in Lee’s apartment and felt like an ass for getting them to call in on the hour every hour like he was some kind of concerned parent with kids out on prom night. He’d’ve gone himself but he didn’t feel like having his knee tested quite that way just four weeks out of the hospital. Of course, it didn’t take long on the next job, parading through a desert somewhere in the Middle East while he wondered when exactly Christmas had learned to speak Farsi, to realise his fucking knee was never going to be up to that kind of shit again, not really. 

“Doesn’t mean you have to give up the job,” Lee told him, strapping the fuck out of Barney’s knee in the cockpit while they flew back home afterwards. “You can still fly. You can still shoot. Your tactics aren’t that bad for an old guy. You’re just never gonna run a four-minute mile through a Laotian jungle ever again.”

Barney snorted in a highly undignified manner but he couldn’t honestly remember the last time he’d had any dignity at all around Lee, and he guessed even if he couldn’t keep up with the other guys anymore that didn’t mean he had to retire. Maybe just part of the way, he thought, because hell, it wasn’t like his bank balance couldn’t stand to support him in his twilight years.

He realised he’d only been home long enough to pick up a bag of clothes in five weeks, then six, not that it mattered a whole lot since he owned his own place outright and so he wasn’t exactly getting behind on the rent. His shit started to make its way into Lee’s place after that, clothes, a gun or two, a parachute he’d got no use for in the city stuffed into the back of a closet with a suit he’d never seen Lee wear and an exercise mat probably left over from the time Lacy persuaded Lee into couples’ yoga, his sound system out in the lounge because Christmas’s was cheap piece of crap. No one said a word about the fact the two of them were pretty much living together, like somehow it made sense. Maybe it did, or maybe it was just that no one gave a damn what they were doing and Barney wasn’t sure which idea was weirder.

The morning of the first day of week seven, they jogged in the morning then went straight into the shower and then, right then, as Lee’s hand went down around his cock, was the moment it ceased to be enough. 

“Stop,” Barney said. 

“Stop?” 

“Yeah. Stop.”

Lee pulled back his hand. He stepped back and Barney turned to face him, wondering what the hell had just changed, wondering how this could have seemed like a good idea when it wasn’t like Lee’s hands on him were a bad thing and now Lee was clearly wondering what he’d done wrong or if the whole situation was wrong like he’d thought it was in the start or some such pseudo-homophobic bullshit that he’d’ve liked to slap right out of him if at all possible. He did no such thing but what he did do he knew he shouldn’t be doing because Lee’s face was a damn picture. But he went down on his knees anyway, in spite of the hard shower floor and when he looked up Lee’s eyes were just a fraction wider than was usual like this was the last thing he wanted but somehow the _only_ thing he wanted. He could’ve stopped, he guessed, but he ran his hands up over Lee’s calves, round and up and over his shower-wet thighs, settled them at his hips and leaned in to take him into his mouth like it was the most casual, natural next move in the world. Like he didn’t feel like he’d just taken their whole damn friendship and stomped the shit out of it.

It took a couple of minutes sucking on him like a goddamn human popsicle for Lee to even start to relax, a couple of minutes after that till he felt Lee’s fingers run over his wet hair and twist into it lightly, not quite tentatively because Lee Christmas was _not_ tentative, but it was...exploratory, maybe. And after that it wasn’t long till he had to press Lee’s hips back against the wall with both hands to stop him bucking into his mouth and making him gag like he’d never sucked cock in his life before, not long after that till Lee came in fitful bursts with one hand clamped down over his own mouth like he thought he was going to disturb the damn neighbours and Barney spat into the drain, opened his mouth and half-filled it with shower water to rinse it out while he was still down there on his knees. Lee laughed behind his hand like it was fucking hysterical until Barney came jerkily back up to his feet and suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore, probably because Barney was close enough to him that his erection rested against Lee’s abdomen, hot and hard and heavy. 

“Fuck,” Lee said. red-faced and part-flustered, a mark where his hand had been clamped down hard over his face just starting to fade and Barney was pretty sure he’d never seen him look like that in all the time he’d known him. “You wanna fuck me.” 

Barney shrugged. “Well, yeah.” He didn’t say he’d wanted to since day one. Maybe he didn’t have to say it.

Lee ran one hand over his head and then ran the other hand over it too, both hands pausing up there, not that standing there under running water with his hands at the back of his neck did anything for the situation since all it did was stretch more muscles taut and Barney was pretty sure much more of that and he’d get off without any more damn stimulation at all. He fucking hated himself, somewhere high north of sixty and he was acting like a horny highschool kid. Somewhere north of sixty where he should’ve known better and he’d just admitted he wanted to screw his best friend.

“Yeah, I’m not even close to ready for that,” Lee said in the end, and Barney tried not to think how that sounded like there were things he _was_ ready for, or how maybe there was a notion at some point he _would_ be ready because damn that was just setting himself up for disappointment in a multitude of ways. “But. Look.” He turned around then, leaned on his forearms against the tiled wall. “You can do it between my legs, right?”

“Yeah,” Barney said, trying not to laugh at the fucking insanity of it as he stepped up closer. “Yeah, I can do that.” 

He ran one hand down Lee’s soaked back, squeezed one cheek and apparently that made him rest his forehead down against the tiles, close his eyes. Barney took a wider stance, leaning against the wall with one hand as he took himself in the other hand and pressed in between Lee’s thighs, up high so his dick slid up against his perineum. Lee made a sort of frustrated, weirded-out groaning sound like he’d never seen himself doing anything like this in his life and he probably hadn’t but he didn’t tell him to stop so he didn’t, he just slid his free arm around Lee’s waist and slipped his hand down to squeeze at his balls as he rocked his hips against him, the friction doing the job pretty damn well. He rested his forehead between Lee’s shoulders, changed his mind and pressed his mouth there instead, changed his mind again and pressed his mouth to the back of Lee’s neck, his shoulder, bit down lightly and Lee laughed tightly, swallowed the sound quickly and swatted Barney’s hand away from between his thighs. Then he turned around again to face him, mission aborted after it’d barely begun. Barney guessed he should’ve known better.

“You okay?” he asked, which was pretty much the dumbest question under the sun, under the circumstances. Lee gave him a look that said exactly that. 

“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,” Lee said then, like that answered the question in any way as he shuffled aside under the insistent spray of shower and then pressed Barney up against the wall in his place. “You’ve done this before, yeah?” 

Lee leaned in, pressed up against him, leaning on one arm as the hand of the other arm went down between them, wrapped around Barney’s cock. Then Lee’s mouth was at his neck, lips under his jaw, sucking, breathless, and it was dumb and he shouldn’t’ve let him do it but he did and he was pretty sure he’d have a hell of a hickey there in a couple of minutes or less, like either of them were young enough to carry that off. 

“Yeah, I’ve done this before,” Barney said, resting his head back against the tiled wall and exposing his throat, but he wasn’t totally sure if that was the truth or not as he slipped his arms around Lee’s waist, grabbing his ass, hauling him in closer. One hand went down between the two of them, closed over Lee’s and showed him just how to do it, harder, faster, and Lee’s mouth dipped to his collarbone, the hollow at the base of his throat, the scar he was probably always going to have at his shoulder from the damn hit-and-run and then Lee pulled back just far enough to look at him, their hands still moving over the length of Barney’s cock caught up there between them. 

Maybe Lee meant to say something, Barney thought. Maybe he meant to come out with some smartass comment about how this didn’t make him gay, about how it was just good to let off steam sometimes, how he’d never meant to do it and they should probably stop before it totally fucked up their friendship like they hadn’t already gotten about forty miles past the point of no return. But he didn’t speak, he just leaned in, the look on his face part way between bewilderment and flat-out terror as he kissed him instead like the decision had come totally out of left field for him, too, and not just for Barney. It was hard and hot and a fraction desperate round the edges though Barney probably didn’t help that with the way one of his hands went up to the back of Lee’s shaved head then dipped down, followed his spine, pressing, fingers splayed over the small of his back, holding him there. Another few seconds and he came between the two of them, shuddering hard and perversely grateful they were still in the shower so the mess he made would wash away in seconds because getting covered in another guy’s stuff was probably high on the list of what would freak Lee the hell out and shut him down. But Lee didn’t stop kissing him, just let it slow right down, fingers going up into Barney’s hair as he leaned against him and the only thing Barney could do was kiss him back till finally, _finally_ , Lee took a breath against Barney’s mouth and then stepped away, closed eyes flickering open. 

“Well, damn,” Lee said. 

“Yeah,” Barney agreed. 

“I think maybe I need to re-evaluate my position _vis-à-vis_ some shit,” Lee said. “Y’know, in light of this.”

Barney gave him what was meant to be a smile of _no shit, Sherlock_ but he figured he probably just looked as dazed as Lee did, trying to catch his breath. Maybe Lee was right; the way his heart was hammering in his chest right then it felt like a massive coronary was a hell of a lot more likely than totally worn out knees.

“Yeah,” he agreed, and he paused, then he reached over to turn off the shower, took a breath. “Hey, Drummer called last night. We’ve got a job lined up.”

And that, it seemed, was one pretty damn effective way of shifting away from the issue at hand. Convenient, Barney thought. Maybe they’d talk about it later, but he was pretty sure they’d never talk about it at all.

***

So, if they were going into another impossible situation Barney had to say at least they weren’t heading to some war-torn ex-Soviet nation over in Eastern Europe full of tanks and rocket launchers and rubble. Of course, where they landed wasn’t really all that much better; Barney had been to Honduras before, twice, and it hadn’t ended well either time. He told Lee a story about the time he’d been over there back when he’d been with the Air Force, back in special ops, and he was pretty sure it did nothing for their enthusiasm at all. Of course, it turned out Lee had been there with the SAS and he didn’t have happy stories, either.

They landed in the middle of no-fucking-where, in mountains near the Guatemalan border on a landing strip that was so far from being an actual landing strip in any reasonable way that Barney was nearly concerned they were going to careen off of the side of the damn hill and into a fucking lake. Some CIA asset or other had been snatched and as impenetrable as the area was and as dumb as the operation seemed Drummer had decided it needed to be done, something about national security and how the CIA couldn’t be seen to be interfering in Honduras after the recent coup or some such bullshit that frankly didn’t interest Barney or any of the rest of the team one tiny iota. They just had a job to do and after all, it paid pretty well; sometimes they liked to pretend the money was the only thing that mattered when they probably all knew they’d be there for minimum wage.

“So, Christmas is in charge,” Barney said, as the guys were grabbing their shit back in the cabin after their hair-raising landing. There was a general groan went up around the place; Barney was getting the idea that Lee drove them pretty hard when he was running things on the ground and they liked to bitch about it, none of which was exactly a bad thing from what he could tell. “I’ll be here where you’re done. In and out, no playing around.”

“You know, some people would call that nepotism,” Gunner said, in the middle of tying a bandana around his forehead.

“Then some people don’t understand what nepotism actually means,” Christmas said, glancing at Barney and then back at Gunner as he fixed his beret. “I’m pretty sure we’re not related. Do we look related?” Barney shook his head. “Barney doesn’t think we look related. Do _you_ think we look related?” 

“Yeah, no, but you’re…” Gunner trailed off with a vague wave of his hands and Barney winced in anticipation because the guy was _never_ subtle, didn’t have a subtle bone in his body, which was probably why he did the job he did. Hell, it was the reason he’d picked him up for the team in the first place, or at least a substantial contributing factor. “Well, you’re fucking, right?”

Barney dropped his head into his hands and groaned, then he looked back over at Lee between his fingers like a bad goddamn comedy. Lee clenched his jaw, the muscles working visibly as he did so, and raised his hands to his hips, cocked his head. 

“What gives you that impression?” he said. 

“Well, you’re living together,” Smilee pointed out. 

“In a one bedroom apartment, guys, c’mon,” Caesar added. 

“Two bedrooms, I think it has,” Galgo said. “But the second one is completely and totally empty. I’ve seen it. There is no bed.” 

“So, _one bedroom_ ,” Caesar repeated, with a shake of his head in Galgo’s direction. “And the boss has a giant hickey, man, really.”

“I’m not surprised,” Toll Road put in, as Barney frowned and pulled up his collar not nearly casually enough that it wouldn’t look like he was attempting to hide said hickey. “My therapist thinks they’ve probably been doing it from the start. And I mean, white jeans, Christmas? Is that a straight guy wardrobe choice back in England or am I reading this whole thing wrong?”

“They make him look like a metrosexual karate instructor,” Gunner said, with a considered nod.

“And then there is all the… flirting,” Galgo continued, gesturing at the two of them in his usual inimitable way. 

_Flirting?_ Lee mouthed at Barney, raising his brows, and Barney just shrugged because frankly that was easier than making sense out of what Galgo said most of the time. 

“They are fighting so often it can only mean burning passion between the sheets.” 

“You should maybe get some cream for that, guys” Thorn said, cracking himself up and absolutely no one else, and as Luna cuffed Thorn round the back of the head, Lee turned and promptly marched the fuck out of the cabin and back into the cockpit. 

“Well done, guys,” Barney said, practically scowling at the lot of them as he gave them a sarcastic round of applause, then went forward to join him. So much for the smooth-running operation.

“So, they all think we’re having it off,” Lee said, sitting there in the co-pilot’s seat with his head on the wheel. 

“Well, they’re not exactly wrong, Lee.” 

Lee sighed into his hands. “So now _you’re_ gonna start?” 

“It’s the truth.” Barney paused a second. “Almost the truth. Pretty near the truth. It’s in the same zip code as the truth.”

“And you’re not gonna take the mickey out of my white jeans?”

“I kinda like ‘em,” Barney said.

“You do?”

 

“Yeah,” he said, “but I kinda liked the kilt, too.”

Lee almost smiled. “Yeah, I guess you never really did have the best taste,” he said. “I mean, you hired the Swedish arse. And seriously, _Galgo_. What the hell.”

Barney shrugged. “Gotta keep you on your toes somehow,” he said.”And if we ever need to talk someone to death, we’ve got it covered.”

They left after that, Lee glaring at the guys as he tried hard not to smile, the others getting the idea and shutting the fuck up if only because they knew they’d got a job to do though Barney was pretty impressed that Lee had taken the whole thing as well as he had, considering. They split into two teams to come at the compound from two different sides, Barney and Thorn keeping track from a screen in the back of the plane as night started to fall, listening in on the chatter. Christmas’s team went in. Smilee’s team went in a couple of minutes later, and then all fucking hell broke loose. So, like a gigantic ass, Barney went in after them and left Thorn there with the plane. 

The bastard kidnappers turned out to be a well-organised Central American drug cartel, of course they did, and Barney made a mental note as his knee throbbed like hell that he’d have to thank Drummer for that tiny omission from his intel. Three shots from his revolver and Gunner was freed up from his position pinned down just inside the compound perimeter and Smilee and Luna jogged over to join them. 

“Christmas and Galgo hit a tripwire,” Smilee said. “The place is a fucking fortress, Barney. The militia took ‘em in.”

And so they went in after them, because what else could they do. It wasn’t like they were going to leave without them.

It might actually have been fun in a demented way if it hadn’t been for the damn throbbing in his knee and he was practically dragging his damn left leg by the time they found where they’d marched Lee and Galgo away to. Caesar was wielding his latest in a long line of big fucking guns and did a hell of a lot of damage while Gunner picked off a few of the others from his position up on the roof with a rifle and scope.Thorn hacked in from the plane and got the security system down and in the end it was pretty simple, in the end there wasn’t even a goddamn reason for Barney to have limped his ass in from the plane because Christmas was just driving a knife into the last guy’s neck with his usual impressive efficiency when Barney gunned down the door. 

“I thought you were waiting in the plane,” Lee said, frowning as he wiped off his knife. 

“I thought you weren’t gonna get caught,” Barney replied. 

“Who the hell _are_ you guys?” said the CIA asset they’d just rescued. 

They didn’t bother to answer, just got the hell out of there, Doc and Mars hauling Barney along because Lee had stalked off on point. And even when they’d gotten back up in the air safe and sound, that didn’t stop Barney feeling like an idiot. He should’ve left Lee to it. He’d really fucked up this time.

***

“You don’t think I can do my job,” Christmas said once they’d landed the plane, once the others had headed home, once they were alone. It had been a frustratingly long flight with stops for fuel and really all Barney wanted to do was get home and sleep, even if that meant getting home to his own place and not Lee’s. He hadn’t quite managed to gauge just how pissed Lee actually was or how far he’d have to go to get his sorry ass off of the naughty list but he had a feeling he had a long way to go. 

“I _know_ you can do your job,” Barney replied, but it kinda felt like too little too late even as he said it. 

“Maybe you _know_ it,” Lee said, “but for a second back there you didn’t _believe_ it.” 

There was no real good way to say he knew it, he believed it, but he’d needed to be there just in case. There was no real good way to say he’d panicked like a fucking idiot and he should’ve known better, that he _did_ know better, that he’d do better in future. So he just shoved his hands into the high chest pockets of his worn black flak vest and said nothing at all, did nothing at all, until he apparently changed his goddamn mind because no, _no_ , he wasn’t going to have Lee fucking Christmas tell him what he did and did not believe. 

He pulled off his beret and tossed it aside, not particularly caring where it wound up. He unzipped his vest and tossed that onto a bench behind him, untied the guns from around his thighs and unbuckled the gun belt, tossed that to the floor with a heavy clunk and followed it up with the revolver from the small of his back while Lee stood there and watched him, looking oddly intrigued despite his obvious irritation. Then, unarmed, he took two quick steps closer, wincing as a painful twinge shot through his fucked up knee, and he reached into one of the many pockets of Lee’s jacket to pull out one of his knives. 

“You wanna know what I believe?” Barney said, tapping the flat of the blade against Lee’s jacket like he had any idea what he was going to do next, like any of what he was doing made any sense at all. 

“I’m all ears.”

Barney honestly didn’t know what he was going to do until he did it, till his fingers went around one of Lee’s wrists and pulled up one of his hands, pressed the grip of the knife into his palm, closed his fingers around it. Then he raised it up; he tilted his head back and set the edge of the knife right up against his throat because apparently that felt sensible at a time when nothing else about the situation seemed sensible at all. Then dropped his own hands away and left Lee to hold the knife there under his chin, over his throat, straight and steady. His heart was thumping, pumped with adrenaline, but Lee wouldn’t hurt him. He wouldn’t.

“I believe I trust you with my goddamn life, Lee,” he said, and he pressed forward just the tiniest fraction against the razor-sharp edge of the blade, almost shivered as he felt the hot prickle of metal breaking skin and Lee’s eyes widened at it, his mouth opened, but he said absolutely nothing and quickly snapped his mouth closed again. Barney couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen him speechless but at least he looked like he got his drift. “There’s nobody I trust more.”

Lee turned the knife in his hand and frowned. “So this is how you tell me?” he said, trailing the tip of the knife up over the underside of Barney’s chin, pressing there with the point so Barney tilted his head back more, lifted his chin higher, exposed more of his throat. “Is this supposed to be romantic?” 

“For guys like us?” Barney said, feeling a wry smile start to tug at his mouth. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is what romance looks like.”

Lee didn’t look convinced and Barney guessed he could see why; after all, it wasn’t like Lee had gone out of his way to get better acquainted or closer associated with any guy the way he’d wound up with him because Barney had a feeling he’d been pretty much running away from that, all the girls, trying with Lacy, hearts and flowers and chocolates and dinner out like he knew anything about normal life he hadn’t just seen in a TV movie on the odd day he wasn’t carrying a gun strapped to his hip with the vague intent to kill. The number of times Barney had wanted to tell him to stop acting like he wanted out of the life, wanted to say he knew him better than that, maybe knew him better than anyone, but he’d kept his mouth shut. Maybe he should’ve said something. Maybe he’d been right not to. Maybe he’d pushed all of this too far and this was breaking point.

Then Lee drew the knife down, the tip of it against Barney’s skin not quite heavy enough to raise blood but he still felt it, scraping, as it rested at the hollow at the base of his throat, as it rested there at the collar of his black t-shirt. He’d probably killed someone with that knife before then, probably more than one someone and he probably hadn’t thought twice about it, but now he was _really_ thinking, his eyes on the spot where the knife connected with Barney’s skin. Lee took a breath, slowly, let it out and then he moved, quickly, pressed one hand to Barney’s chest and marched him backwards up against the side of the inside of the plane in spite of his crapped-out knee and though his head bounced off the exposed metal of the fuselage the tip of the knife didn’t dig in at all. Luckily, knife work had always been one of Lee’s more obvious talents, or maybe that wasn’t really luck at all.

Lee didn’t speak again, just grabbed a handful of the front of Barney’s shirt and switched his grip on the knife in his hand, yanked it down through the collar and tore down till the cotton t-shirt hung open over his chest. Barney let him do it because there was nothing else for it, let him push the shirt off over his shoulders then run the knife down, a quick loop around one nipple and then down, scraping but not cutting, hard enough to feel but not to make him bleed except here and there where he did it on purpose probably just to see how Barney would react, if he’d give it up and push him back or move away but all he did was keep absolutely still, all he did was let him keep on going. 

Lee popped the button off the waist of Barney’s pants with the blade of the knife, cut a careful line down the side of the zipper and then paused to unbuckle his belt. 

“You trust me?” Lee said, his voice thick. 

Barney nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I trust you.”

Lee shoved Barney’s pants down over his hips, caught his underwear and did the same thing with that. He traced the outline of the tattoo at one of Barney’s shoulders with the tip of the knife, not quite contemplative about it but like he was trying to figure out what to do next or maybe just if he could really do what he was planning to do next, then pushed him down onto a bench, sat him down, tapped the flat of the blade against Barney’s collarbone then against his own over his jacket as he looked down at him and then, well, hell. Then he went down on his knees there on the floor in front of him, glanced up and ran the flat of the blade the length of Barney’s cock, cool metal on overheated skin. Barney shivered, took an unsteady breath. Lee put the knife back up to his throat. 

“Don’t you fucking dare tell me I’m doing it wrong,” he said, with a quirk of his brows. Then he took him into his mouth and he sucked, kneeling there fully clothed with a knife pressed up to Barney’s throat like this was the most natural thing in the world and it didn’t vie strongly for the strangest moment of Barney’s whole life. 

He didn’t do it wrong. Barney wasn’t sure he could’ve done it wrong if he’d tried.

***

They stopped by a bar on the way home, had too much to drink or not enough and got into _two_ fights, not so much real fights the way they both knew them in a professional sense so maybe more like drunken scuffles. There was something about the crappy bars Barney knew that seemed to attract suited yuppie trash at the weekend and Saturday night as it was, Barney couldn't say it was a huge shock when they ran into the exact same guy he hadn't quite screwed in his truck maybe a year before, drunk as hell and twice as loud. 

"So this is why you couldn't get it up," the guy hissed, getting in Barney's face, unsteady on his feet so really all it would’ve taken to put him down on his ass was a firm shove, maybe not even all that firm. "Looks like you like it rough. Guess I was too pretty for you." 

"I think this fella just called me ugly," Lee said, looking moderately amused over his bottle of beer. "I don't usually stand for that. At least not from anyone who's not you." 

"It's not worth it, Lee," Barney said. But Lee was already putting his beer down on the table, standing; the guy had three, maybe four inches on him, including the ridiculous over-styled hair, and Lee shot Barney a look. 

"Seriously? _This_ is what you go for when I'm not around?"

Barney shrugged. "You were with Lacy," he said. 

"You could've waited, you impatient arse. I'd've got there in the end. Y'know, like Gunner when you tell a knock-knock joke."

The guy frowned. "Can't keep your boyfriend under control?" he said, cracking his knuckles like that was even a thing in real fighting and Barney had to remind himself not to laugh. "He's gonna get himself hurt." 

Barney smiled almost ruefully as he shook his head. He almost felt sorry for the guy. "Yeah," he said. "No, he's not."

And Lee proved that point right away by grabbing the guy's tie and yanking down, bouncing his head off of the table that stood between them and knocking him out cold right then and there, no more discussion required. Barney thought it was pretty damn eloquent, even if Lee looked like he’d enjoyed the whole thing a _bit_ too much. 

The second fight involved more actual fighting, when the guy's friends came after them outside once they'd decided to vamoose before anyone got the cops involved because frankly, the last thing Barney felt like was a night in a cell. There were five of them, all suited and booted and looking like the kind of crappy mid-level lawyers who'd enjoy a good fight club as long as no one was allowed to hit them in the face and spoil their next important court date; Barney strongly suspected none of them had any clue what their friend had gotten up to in order to get himself put down so damn emphatically by the bald-headed British guy in the flat cap. Neither of them felt the need to enlighten them, but Barney felt a sort of perverse amusement at smacking one of them directly in the eye then splitting another's lip in a way that was going to look pretty damn ugly in the morning, court date be damned. Then he stood back and watched Lee deal with the other three, making pretty short work of it though that was unsurprising given the fact he'd originally picked the guy up just three months out of the SAS and he'd forgotten more about unarmed combat than the three guys knew right then combined.

Lee flashed him a grin as he kneed the last guy in the groin and pushed him to the ground, then they left, caught a cab and went home. 

Somewhere along the line a key to Lee's place had wound up on Barney's keychain and he let them in, Lee locking the door behind them, and sometime around 1am, tipsy, adrenaline-pumped, they pulled at each other's clothes on the way into the bedroom. Lee's mouth came down sloppily over the series of shallow little grazes he'd dotted over Barney's chest like creepy perforations with his knife and Barney pushed him up against the nearest available wall, peeling off Lee's shirt with ample cooperation. They went over on the bed, falling down in a tangle of half-removed pants and Barney still had one boot on with the laces tied tight, Lee's underwear somehow caught in the zipper of Barney's jeans and they had to pull apart to sort it all out, pushing and pulling till everything was discarded over the side of the bed and then Lee looked at him like he was unsure how the hell they'd both wound up there naked on his bed or maybe the look meant something else completely. Barney had been pretty sure he’d known and understood the full repertoire of Christmas expressions till they’d gotten naked the first time. It was a learning curve.

"That guy was a cunt," Lee said, sitting there naked as his expression changed into something more familiar, like somehow what he’d said followed a perfect line from a conversation that they hadn't had at all since they’d left the bar. "You were really gonna do him?"

Barney sighed, stretching out on his back. "Yeah," he said. "When you're gay in this line of work you don't get a whole lot of options on who and when and where." 

"So you are."

"Are what?"

"Gay.” Lee raised his brows as he reached over to pat Barney’s cheek mock-condescendingly. “C'mon, old man, keep up." 

Barney chuckled lowly, tired, aching, as Lee stretched out next to him. "Yeah, it's not like it's some big secret."

"I guess I just thought you were... ambiguous." 

"You never wondered why you'd never seen me with a woman?"

Lee shrugged. "Figured you kept your private life private," he said. "Looks like I was giving you too much credit.” Lee turned off of his back and onto his side, head propped up on one hand as he rubbed the other one over the stubble coming in thick over his jawline and Barney knew all about that damn stubble, at least so said the burn on his thighs from the in-plane blowjob that he was still trying to wrap his head around. “So, what does he have that I don't?"

"A hairstyle?" Lee backhanded him playfully across the face. Then they went quiet and somehow all the urgency had gone out of the situation now they were lying there naked in the bad light from the semi-functional lamp on the nightstand, so Lee leaned over him to turn it off completely. 

"So the damn therapist was right, yeah?" Lee said, once the lights were off. Barney wondered if maybe it was easier to say in the dark. "You were ogling my arse from the start?"

"Something like that," Barney agreed. 

"Can't say I blame you..." Lee said, philosophically, and then he did something unexpected; he settled in close and slung an arm over Barney's waist, casual, like they'd never slept any other way, like it hadn’t been as if there’d been a magical line down the centre of the bed that read _thou shalt not cross_. "You should've said something, you taciturn old queer," Lee went on, but the tone was oddly fond and Barney chuckled as Lee twisted and turned to pull the blanket up over them both before he settled back down with the fingers of one hand rubbing lazy circles over Barney’s ribcage. He smelled like beer and sweat and something underneath like gun oil and gunpowder and metal, and they could both have used a shower but right at that moment Barney couldn’t’ve give less of a damn about that if he’d tried. 

"You'd've knocked my ass out."

"Yeah, but you'd've come round.” Lee took a breath, sighed it out against Barney’s shoulder. “Turns out I would've, too."

Barney chuckled but he didn't wait for another response. He was too fucking exhausted to stay awake another second and that was fine; it wasn't like he wanted to explain he'd probably have needed a supply of little blue pills to get it up twice in one day anyway.

***

Drummer called in the morning, woke them both up around 8am and Barney guessed late nights had turned out to be off the menu for both of them if they wanted to get in their usual morning run. Not that he was giving it any serious thought with the way his knee was throbbing like a son of a bitch all the way through the conversation. 

“Tell that smug wanker we want _real_ intel next time,” Lee said, still sprawling next to him in bed, taking up more space than it should’ve been possible for a guy his size to do but Barney guessed if the unspoken agreement about sides of the bed had fallen by the wayside that kind of made sense. They’d never exactly been constrained by the notion of personal space.

Drummer said something uncharitable about Lee’s accent that Barney translated into _learn to speak English_ , and Lee took the phone to insult Drummer in a perfect generic newscaster American accent that Barney had _never_ heard him use before, even when he’d been posing as American with a pretty blue American passport. Lee passed the phone back with a self-satisfied smile once he was done and Barney hung up twenty seconds later, dropping the phone onto the nightstand with a groan.

“Drummer says you should talk like that all the time,” he said. “I’m pretty sure I’d kill you in your sleep if you did.”

Lee snorted. “You’d _try_.”

With a roll of his eyes Barney left the bed and headed not-quite-limping for the bathroom. He felt pretty much like he’d been beaten with a bat and intended to get into the shower at his earliest convenience but Lee stopped him by the door out from the bedroom into the lounge, taking one of Barney’s wrists in each hand. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” Lee said, stepping up close behind him, and as much as being naked wasn’t usually a huge deal to Barney it felt like a pretty huge deal right at that moment, as Lee pressed up against his back, warm and solid. 

“The shower,” Barney said, glancing back over his shoulder. “If I stink half as much as you do, I’ll need it.”

Lee huffed against the back of his neck and tugged him backwards. “What if I said you’d just need to get back in there when I’m finished?” 

And yeah, there wasn’t much he could say to that, especially not considering the catch in Lee’s voice when he said it, so he let himself get dragged back to bed, let Lee stretch out on top of him, laid there with Lee propped up on both hands looking at him like he wasn’t sure what he should do next, if anything. 

“I thought you’d got plans,” Barney said. “You sounded like you’d got plans.”

“I had,” Lee replied. “I just can’t remember what.”

“And you think _I’m_ getting old,” Barney said. “Christ, you’ve got the memory span of a hyperactive preschooler.” 

Lee shook his head with a wry little smile and leaned in. “You’re mixing your metaphors again, grandpa,” he said, murmured against Barney’s jaw as he came down onto his forearms, and Barney guessed Lee had some ideas left in his head after all. So he moved his hands, ran them down Lee’s back; the texture of his skin felt different outside the shower, smoother, harder, though that was probably just a product of Barney’s overactive imagination and yeah, his imagination had been working overtime on a pretty regular basis since he’d first run into Lee six or seven years earlier, maybe he needed to admit that if just to himself. He moved his hands down, fingers tracing the long line of Lee’s spine down to the curve of his ass where he squeezed, slow and firm, and Lee muttered something low and unintelligible against his neck. 

“You say something, Christmas?” Barney said, teasing, hands trailing back up to the dimples in the small of Lee’s back and then down again, squeezing his ass a little harder. 

Lee pulled back just far enough to look down at him with an entertaining pseudo-grimace. “I said I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,” he said, pushing up onto his hands, then he hauled himself up onto his knees astride Barney’s thighs and fuck, watching him sit there straddling him, naked, hard, was pretty much top of the list of the sexiest things Barney had seen in years. Lee rubbed both hands over his head, rubbed at the back of his neck and Barney just gave him a lopsided smile as he rested his hands on his thighs.

“You wanna fuck me?” Barney said. 

“Christ, no,” Lee said, too fast, and grinned quickly afterwards, rueful and a little wry as he rubbed at his jaw. “Yeah, that came out wrong.”

“Yeah, I think it did,” Barney confirmed. “You wanna go ahead and try _Ways To Kill the Mood_ for a hundred?”

Lee made a face halfway between frowning and wincing as he rubbed the smile from his face with the palm of his hand. “I want you to do me like you wanted to do that gobby cunt from the bar,” he said, after a moment’s awkward silence, then put his hands on his hips, brows raised, head tilted; he might’ve looked challenging if he hadn’t also looked like he’d just admitted a fetish for _My Little Pony_ or said he wanted to get into roller derby in his free time. “Yeah?”

All Barney could really do was nod and say, “Yeah.” Asking him if he meant it would probably just have pissed him off and besides, he knew he didn’t want him to change his mind.

Lee moved off of him and Barney turned to the nightstand; he knew there was a just-started tube of KY in there and he’d been desperately trying not to wonder what the fuck Lee had used that for since the first time he’d found it, so he pulled it out of the drawer. When he turned back, Lee had stretched out face down, buried his head in pillows like he was half dying from embarrassment and Barney swatted his ass with the back of one hand. 

“We do it like that and I’ll smother you,” Barney said, and push-pulled at his shoulder. “On your side, smartass.”

So Lee shifted around and got up on his side and Barney stretched out on one of his, face to face, not far apart, almost _too_ close so Barney’s eyes couldn’t quite focus.

“You know what you’re doing, yeah?” Lee said, as he watched Barney pop open the cap of the lube with eyes just a fraction wider than normal. Barney squeezed the stuff out liberally over his fingers and for a long moment he didn’t reply, just shifted his arm over Lee’s waist, nudged at his knee till he pulled it up and rested his thigh over the top of Barney’s, looking thoroughly weirded the fuck out even while he held his gaze. Barney’s hand dipped back, followed the crack of Lee’s ass and then pressed between his cheeks, index finger finding his asshole and rubbing against it slowly. He started to push that finger in, steady, and Lee tensed up hard.

“Yeah, I know what I’m doing,” Barney said. “Been doing it since I was nineteen. Guess you’re a late bloomer.” 

Lee made a show of sucking his teeth in disapproval at that particular statement, but any heat there might’ve been in the look was totally and utterly negated by the fact his hand was tightening at Barney’s hip, the fact his thigh was inching higher, the fact he was doing his best to relax. 

“So, nineteen,” Lee said, still somehow looking him in the eye as Barney continued to press that one slick finger into him, though he looked like he was about to pass out from mortification. 

“Yeah, I was getting my cherry popped before you were even born,” he replied. 

“Anyone I know?”

“Nah.”

“Good.”

“You always were a jealous son of a bitch.”

A second finger went in next, starting to push in slow and careful before Lee could say anything else, making him hitch his knee up higher and let his eyes close for a second. 

“And this is _really_ what you wanted to do with that yuppie bastard?” Lee said. 

“This is what I’m doing ‘cause you’ve got the tightest ass outside of the CIA,” Barney said. “Relax, Christmas. You’ll live longer.”

“Here I thought you’d found the fountain of youth and it turns out you’re just a lazy cunt.” Lee chuckled, but that wore off pretty quickly and he frowned instead, the hand that wasn’t tucked underneath him going up to squeeze at Barney’s tattooed bicep. “Knock that shit off, yeah? The tattoo says _Expendable_ , not _Handle With Care_.” He pushed at Barney’s chest. “You should do it before I change my mind. Like I said, like the wanker from the bar.”

“You mean that?”

“Yeah, I mean that.”

Barney considered that for a second, lying there with Lee’s hand pushing firmly at his sternum like he actually meant it and yeah, okay, Barney thought, they could do that if that was what Lee wanted. He pulled his hand back, fingers out, nodded. 

“On your knees,” he said, and Lee complied, going up on his hands and knees, and Barney shifted around behind him, pulled Lee’s knees wider apart so he could shuffle between his calves and get in close like the idea wasn’t already making his cock twitch. He ran his palms down Lee’s sides, squeezed at his hips, cock resting heavy against his ass, then reached for the lube; he slicked himself quickly and shifted around so he was down on just one knee for leverage and not there on both, shifted in closer and parted Lee’s cheeks with his hands, rubbing between them with the pad of one thumb. Then he took himself in one hand, rubbed the head of his cock between Lee’s cheeks, rubbed right up against his asshole and then pushed forward. It was stupid, and he’d wanted to take it slow though pretty much every fibre of his body was yelling at him to just fuck him already, he’d asked for it more than once. Maybe he meant to ask if he was ready, maybe he meant to ask if he was sure but he just pushed into him, slow but not stopping for a second till he was in as deep as he could get and Lee was practically fucking hyperventilating there in front of him. 

“Fuck,” Lee said, and glanced back over his shoulder just for a second. “ _Fuck_.”

“Pretty much what we’re doing, Lee,” Barney replied, and Lee laughed breathlessly as Barney’s hands went up to frame his waist.

“Pretty much what we should’ve been doing since the start,” Lee said, like some kind of crazy admission he hadn’t known he’d meant to make. And that was it; all Barney could do was flex his hips and make Lee groan to shut him the fuck up. He didn’t need to hear any more; he knew it all already.

It was never going to last long, not the way Barney’s knee ached and not the way Lee went down on one forearm, his other hand going down to stroke at his cock. Barney shifted against him, in him, turned on as much but the idea of what they were doing as he was by the reality of it, the fact it was _Lee_ , the fact that Lee started pushing back to meet him, muscles tight, breath harsh. Barney almost felt drunk with it, his hands there at Lee’s hips as he thrust into him, Lee muffling a string of colourful curses against the pillow not quite effectively enough that Barney couldn’t hear them. It was never going to last long and it didn’t; Lee came first, cursing loudly as he tensed up hard, as his hips jerked and Barney pushed into him hard to ride it out except the way Lee tightened around him over and over brought him off, too, unexpectedly, off guard; one second he was turned on but steady and the next he was in the midst of a surprise fucking orgasm that made his fingers clutch at Lee’s hips maybe hard enough to bruise as he came inside him. He hadn’t even meant to do that. Luckily, Lee didn’t seem to care as they stayed there for a long moment after, Barney still in him, Lee turning his head away from the pillows to catch his breath.

They pulled apart slowly, carefully, messily though they fixed at least some of that with the application of tissues from the nightstand and stretched out, Barney’s knee and back and pretty much everything else in his body relieved by that. Lee turned his head and looked at him; Barney did the same.

“Not bad for an old guy,” Lee said, half-smiling, his skin still flushed. 

“Not bad for a virgin,” Barney said, and Lee laughed and turned and kissed him not quite just to shut him up, morning breath be damned.

Maybe that was when it hit him, lying there getting a totally dumbass beard burn on the palm of his hand from the back of Lee’s shaved head, lying there in a mess that was pretty much going to require burning the sheets since neither of them was hot on laundry. Maybe it hit him when Lee pulled back and lay there on his side, finding every scar on Barney’s body with his fingers, and he started to make him tell him how he’d gotten each of them in turn, even the ones he’d been around for, like an excuse to get his hands on him as much as getting the old stories out of him, an autobiography in scars. Most of them were from jobs old and new, a few from dumb domestic mishaps, one from the Air Force academy before he’d ever even thought about picking up as a mercenary. And then a couple of them were from or because of Stonebanks and Lee scowled at the name, said something about not usually speaking ill of the dead but the guy had turned out to be a wanker of the highest order. 

“He nearly killed you,” Lee said. 

“Yeah, twice.” 

Lee’s face got hard and he ducked down, pressed his mouth in hotly under Barney’s jaw, nipped with his teeth, sucked, marked him like he didn’t even realise he was doing it and Barney chuckled lowly, fingertips tracing the line of one of Lee’s shoulder blades. 

“I’d’ve killed him,” Lee said, serious, completely serious, and Barney absolutely believed he would’ve done it, no question about it at all, or he’d’ve died trying. And maybe _that_ was when it hit him.

Barney’s hands moved to rest between Lee’s shoulder blades as Lee pushed him down flat to the mattress, as he shifted up on top of him. And Barney knew right then that it wasn’t the sex that had brought them close or closer because they’d _always_ been close. This thing they had they’d had from the start and maybe everything had changed but _nothing_ had changed because all they’d done was admit what was already there. It was a relief. And right then was when he knew.

He’d been going to admit it. It’d taken him seven damn years to work himself up to it, but in a second he knew he’d finally been going to do it. Suddenly, he _knew_.

_That_ was when it hit him because if he'd been going out to buy ketchup or a box of sad microwave fries or a head of broccoli he wasn't even sure he had a pan to cook in he'd've gone to the grocery store on the corner of his street; if he'd needed cough syrup or a pack of condoms for the sex he really wasn't having he'd've gone to the drugstore on the next block; if he'd needed a box of pens like he'd ever been a huge letter-writer or tissues or a new shirt or razors or just about anything he could think of there'd have been a place within about a block and a half and as lazy a motherfucker as he could be sometimes he wouldn't've gotten onto his bike, put on his helmet and _ridden_ there, and not just because there was no decent parking. 

He'd been going to the store but he hadn't been going to a store _nearby_ ; he'd been six blocks from Lee's place by the time he'd gotten knocked off of his bike, by the park where the neighbourhood kids played little league, the good houses where the gnarly old tattooed biker just didn't fit in. Then again, with his half-empty apartment and speedy little motorcycle living out there in a row of push bikes it wasn't like Lee really fit in there, either. They'd both pretty much gotten to that point where the only place they did fit in was the cockpit of a plane as old as Barney was or on the ground in combat boots with an M16 strapped to their chest. He’d wanted to tell him that. There’d been a lot he’d wanted to tell him.

“I called you that day, right?” Barney said. 

“That day you got smeared all over the road?” Lee pulled back, looked down at him with a wry little smile. “Didn’t think you remembered.” 

“But I called.”

“Yeah, you called.”

“I said I wanted to talk. You said you were busy.”

“You said it was important. I said you’d better get me drunk first.”

Barney frowned. “You knew what I was gonna say.”

“I had a good idea, yeah.”

“You were gonna _let_ me?”

Lee paused a second with a familiar not-quite-grimace, and then he gave a quick nod. “Yeah.” 

“ _Why_?”

“Because,” Lee said. “You’ve had a thing for me since we met.”

“You knew that?”

Lee chuckled. “Give me _some_ credit,” he said. “You did a piss-poor job hiding it.”

Barney guess he had to concede that point. “So, _why_?” he asked.

Lee shrugged. “I was gonna say we could still be friends. Guess we know how _that_ turned out.” He took a breath and sighed it out slowly, with a self-deprecating little smile. “Guess I thought seven years was long enough,” he went on. “You needed to get that crap off your chest before kicked the bucket, granddad.” 

Barney snorted. “So this is a public service?”

“Absolutely. You crabby old guys need all the help you can get.”

“You could’ve left out _old_.”

Lee grinned. “You can be my sugar daddy, gramps.”

Barney snickered as he moved, pushed, caught Lee by surprise and tipped him over onto his back, followed over and straddled his thighs, caught his wrists, pinned them to the pillow above his head. “This old guy can still kick your ass, Christmas,” he said with a smile, but it wasn’t like Lee was struggling to get out from under him. He shifted his hips instead, provocatively, as he flexed his wrists under Barney’s hands. 

“I think I’ll do you next time,” Lee said, brows quirked as he looked up at him. “If you think your fragile bones can take it.” 

It was an idea Barney had to admit he liked. The kiss that came after just sealed the deal.

They headed into the bathroom after that, into the shower, fooling around, Lee bitching that he’d gotten shampoo flicked into his eyes though it was pretty far from the worst thing that’d ever happened in his life, Barney pushing him up against the cold tiles and making him curse as he kissed him to make him shut the fuck up. They’d have another job coming up soon and he’d put Lee in charge, maybe he wouldn’t even suit up himself because if nothing else that’d show him he trusted him with the team as well as his life, trusted him to take care of _his own_ life, too. And maybe Barney would take care of himself in return, no more five-mile runs through jungles, no more dicking around blowing shit up like he was still twenty years old; Christmas could handle that part and Barney would fix up the jobs, get them home safe after. He could do that. He’d excel at that and screw his age, Lee was right about that.

It didn't matter if he lived another ten good years or five or two, if he got through twelve months or six or just the next five days, didn’t matter if they both died tomorrow because apparently the only person on earth he wanted to spend that time with was Lee fucking Christmas and he was right there, going nowhere. Lee pulled him close under the shower spray, that damn mischievous glint in his eye like he had a plan and Barney could go with that because he had plans of his own. Christmas wouldn’t know what’d hit him; Barney was older but all that meant was he’d had time to build his repertoire.

And hell, turned out they’d pretty much been an item for years and they were the only morons who hadn’t realised it. They had a whole lot of time to make up for.


End file.
